The Dreikönigskirche (English: Church of the

Three Kings The biblical Magi from Middle Persian ''moɣ''(''mard'') from Old Persian ''magu-'' 'Zoroastrian clergyman' ( or ; singular: ), also referred to as the (Three) Wise Men or (Three) Kings, also the Three Magi were distinguished foreigners in the ...

) is a Lutheran Protestant church and parish in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

, the city's largest Protestant parish. It is located on the south bank of the

Main Main may refer to: Geography * Main River (disambiguation) **Most commonly the Main (river) in Germany * Main, Iran, a village in Fars Province *"Spanish Main", the Caribbean coasts of mainland Spanish territories in the 16th and 17th centuries ...

Sachsenhausen Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...

, opposite the

Frankfurt Cathedral Frankfurt Cathedral (german: link=no, Frankfurter Dom), officially Imperial Cathedral of Saint Bartholomew (german: link=no, Kaiserdom Sankt Bartholomäus) is a Roman Catholic Gothic church located in the heart of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It ...

. The present church building, replacing an older church, was erected from 1875 to 1880 on designs by Franz Josef Denzinger in

Gothic revival style Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

. It features stained glass windows by

Charles Crodel Charles Crodel (September 16, 1894 – November 11, 1973) was a German painter and stained glass artist. Life Crodel was born in Marseille, he studied in 1914 with Richard Riemerschmid, one of the founders of the Deutscher Werkbund, at the M ...

, installed in 1956, and an organ by

Karl Schuke Karl Ludwig Alexander Schuke (6 November 1906 – 7 May 1987) was a German organ builder. The son of the organ builder Alexander Schuke, he continued, together with his brother Hans-Joachim Schuke, to run their father's company in Potsdam until ...

from Berlin completed in 1961. After World War II, the church developed into a centre of church music, with Kurt Thomas as the church musician and

Helmut Walcha Arthur Emil Helmut Walcha (27 October 1907 – 11 August 1991) was a German organist, harpsichordist, music teacher and composer who specialized in the works of the Dutch and German baroque masters. Blind since his teenage years, he is known ...

as the organist. It offers cantata services and concerts. The church is a listed monument, basically preserved as originally designed.

History

At the location of the present church, in Sachsenhausen on the

, across the river from the

, a hospital chapel was consecrated to the

(''Drei Könige'') in 1340. The three Kings were the

patron saints A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Catholicism, Anglicanism, or Eastern Orthodoxy is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or person. I ...

of travellers, and suitable for a city at the trade road along the Main. The church was a simple

hall church A hall church is a church with a nave and aisles of approximately equal height, often united under a single immense roof. The term was invented in the mid-19th century by Wilhelm Lübke, a pioneering German art historian. In contrast to an archi ...

with two naves in

Gothic style Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths ** Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken ...

. For a long time, the priests came from the

Cathedral A cathedral is a church that contains the '' cathedra'' () of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denominatio ...

parish, which meant that no priest was available during the night when the gates of the city were closed. In 1452, the Dreikönigs parish finally became independent, and the church a filial church. The

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

began in Frankfurt in 1522. In 1525, the Dreikönigskirche was the first church in Frankfurt with exclusively Protestant pastors. In 1531, the city employed a third pastor, Peter Pfeiffer from the Barfüßerkloster, which ended the discrimination that Sachsenhausen Christians had felt for centuries. From 1690, the interior was remodelled in

Baroque style The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

. When the church building deteriorated in the 19th century. Friedrich Heß, responsible for building in the city, voted for demolishing it and replacing it with a new church. The 1829/30 contract () between Frankfurt and its Christian churches made the city responsible for the maintenance of church buildings, including organs. In 1869, Franz Josef Denzinger was called to Frankfurt to restore the Frankfurt Cathedral which had been destroyed by fire in 1867. He suggested a new building of the Dreikönigskirche. His plans were accepted in 1872 by the . The last service in the old church was held in April 1872, and it was demolished in 1875. The new church was completed in 1880. It was consecrated on 8 May 1881. Under the Nazi regime, the parish was the first in Frankfurt to join the

Bekennende Kirche The Confessing Church (german: link=no, Bekennende Kirche, ) was a movement within German Protestantism during Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German ...

in 1934. Unlike other churches in Frankfurt, the Dreikönigskirche was not severely damaged by bombing during World War II. The windows were destroyed when the bridges were dynamited in 1945. In 1956, stained-glass windows by

were installed. A new organ was built by from Berlin in 1961, following a disposition by Helmut Walcha. The interior of the church has basically been preserved as originally designed. It is a listed monument for historic reasons. The parish runs a parish hall in the Tucholskystraße. It belongs to the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau, and is its largest parish in Frankfurt.

Architecture

Denzinger designed the church in

, the first and last major church in Frankfurt in that style. The main entrance of the church in the west tower is reached from a small square. The high tower on a square floor dominates the skyline. It was planned to correspond to the Cathedral tower and was at the second-highest building in the city at the time. The

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

extends over five bays. Three front bays are lined by side aisles with sandstone balconies. The choir is a

polygon In geometry, a polygon () is a plane figure that is described by a finite number of straight line segments connected to form a closed ''polygonal chain'' (or ''polygonal circuit''). The bounded plane region, the bounding circuit, or the two to ...

. Denzinger took elements such as

net vault A rib vault or ribbed vault is an architectural feature for covering a wide space, such as a nave, church nave, composed of a framework of crossed or diagonal arched ribs. Variations were used in Roman architecture, Byzantine architecture, Isla ...

ing of the nave, the pulpit, and filigree tracery from late-Gothic style, while round pillars belong to an earlier style. The interior features remnants of the Baroque period of the older church. The church seats 840 people.

Church music

After World War II, church music became a focus at the Dreikönigskirche, with Kurt Thomas as the church musician (''Kantor'') from 1945 to 1957, and

as the organist from 1946 to 1981. Thomas founded an a cappella choir at the church, first called Chor der Dreikönigskirche, then Frankfurter Kantorei, which received international recognition. The choir performed the world premiere of

Kurt Hessenberg Kurt Hessenberg (17 August 1908 – 17 June 1994) was a German composer and professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt. Life Kurt Hessenberg was born on 17 August 1908 in Frankfurt, as the fourth and last child of ...

's ''St Luke Passion'' at the Dreikönigskirche in 1978, initiated and conducted by

Helmuth Rilling Helmuth Rilling (born 29 May 1933) is a German choral conductor and an academic teacher. He is the founder of the Gächinger Kantorei (1954), the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart (1965), the Oregon Bach Festival (1970), the Internationale Bachakademie ...

, also many

Bach cantatas This is a sortable list of Bach cantatas, the cantatas composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. His almost 200 extant cantatas are among his important vocal compositions. Many are known to be lost. Bach composed both church cantatas, most of them for ...

and compositions by Thomas. The church was a leading venue of major church concerts in Frankfurt until the opening of the

Alte Oper Alte Oper (Old Opera) is a concert hall in Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, Germany. It is located in the inner city, Innenstadt, within the banking district Bankenviertel. Today's Alte Oper was built in 1880 as the city's opera house, which was destr ...

as a concert hall in 1981. The present organ was completed in 1961, with Walcha's , by the organ builder

from Berlin. It has 47 stops on three manuals and

pedal A pedal (from the Latin '' pes'' ''pedis'', "foot") is a lever designed to be operated by foot and may refer to: Computers and other equipment * Footmouse, a foot-operated computer mouse * In medical transcription, a pedal is used to control p ...

. The instrument was a gift from the city of Frankfurt to honour Walcha's achievements as the organist. Böhm Advent cantata, Dreikönigskirche, Frankfurt

Böhm Advent cantata, Dreikönigskirche, Frankfurt

Telemann Cantata Kreuzweg, Dreikönigskirche, Frankfurt

In 2020, during the

COVID-19 epidemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identifie ...

, regular cantata services were resumed with solo cantatas. On the first Sunday in Advent, Georg Böhm's cantata ''

Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent.''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. X, page 599. The term is o ...

'' was featured, with soloists Gabriele Hierdeis, Lieselotte Fink,

Anne Bierwirth Anne Bierwirth is a German contralto, focused on concerts and recordings of sacred music, appearing internationally. Besides the standard repertoire such as Bach's ''Christmas Oratorio'', she has explored rarely performed Baroque music such as B ...

Georg Poplutz Georg Poplutz is a German tenor, a soloist in Baroque music, opera and oratorio, and a Lied singer. He has been a member of vocal ensembles such as Johann Rosenmüller Ensemble and Cantus Cölln, and has participated in a project to record th ...

and

Markus Flaig Markus Flaig (born 1971) is a German bass-baritone who has focused on concerts and recordings of sacred music. Career Markus Flaig was born in Horb am Neckar. He studied sacred music and school music, then voice with Beata Heuer-Christen in F ...

, and the Telemann Ensemble Frankfurt, conducted by Andreas Köhs. A cantata service on New Year's Eve 2020 featured Bach's cantata ''Gottlob! nun geht das Jahr zu Ende'', BWV 28 (Praise God! For now the year is ending), with soloists Simone Schwark, Julia Diefenbach, Poplutz and Flaig. In a service during

Lent Lent ( la, Quadragesima, 'Fortieth') is a solemn religious observance in the liturgical calendar commemorating the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert and enduring temptation by Satan, according to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke ...

, they performed Telemann's cantata '' Ich will den Kreuzweg gerne gehen'', composed while he was music director in Frankfurt, on 21 March 2021 with Johannes Hill as the soloist.

History

Architecture

Church music

References

Further reading

External links